Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
A chaotic long-lived vortex at the southern pole of Venus
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
A chaotic long-lived vortex at the southern pole of Venus
Do you wish to request the book?
A chaotic long-lived vortex at the southern pole of Venus
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
A chaotic long-lived vortex at the southern pole of Venus
2013
Overview
A whirling vortex has been observed in the atmosphere at the south pole of Venus. Cloud motions tracked by the Venus Express spacecraft suggest that the south polar vortex is long-lived, erratic and baroclinic in character.
Polar vortices are common in the atmospheres of rapidly rotating planets
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
. On Earth and Mars, vortices are generated by surface temperature gradients and their strength is modulated by the seasonal insolation cycle
1
,
2
,
3
. Slowly rotating Venus lacks pronounced seasonal forcing, but vortices are known to occur at both poles, in an atmosphere that rotates faster than the planet itself
5
,
6
,
7
,
8
. Here we report observations of cloud motions at altitudes of 42 and 63 km above Venus’s south pole using infrared images from the VIRTIS instrument onboard the Venus Express spacecraft. We find that the south polar vortex is a long-lived but unpredictable feature. Within the two cloud layers sampled, the centres of rotation of the vortex are rarely aligned vertically and both wander erratically around the pole with velocities of up to 16 m s
−1
. At the two horizontal levels, the observed cloud morphologies do not correlate with the vorticity of the wind field and change continuously, and vertical and meridional wind shears are also highly variable. We conclude that Venus’s south polar vortex is a continuously evolving structure that is at least 20 km high, extending through a quasi-convective turbulent region.
